Gordon Carrera

And for lots of those people, the anticipation was enormous because they hated Saddam.

He'd been their enemy.

He'd been this ruthless tyrant despite his novelistic career.

And he was finally going to be gone.

And this was it.

And so, yeah, it's a very vivid recollection to me.

But actually, when the war started, I was then in Washington covering things.

Louis Rueda, who we talked about, head of the CIA Iraq Operations Group, he describes taking a Black Hawk over Kuwait just before it starts.

And you can just see all this American armor, you know, tanks and

helicopters and gunships everywhere and then watching on a screen as the trackers for all these vehicles suddenly move over into Iraq as the invasion starts.

And of course the invasion itself goes beautifully.

The ground invasion

It goes amazingly well and amazingly quickly with the thunder run into Baghdad.

A few people do wonder why did Saddam not use any of his special weapons as the troops approach Baghdad, but they take Baghdad incredibly quickly.

That's wild, isn't it?

And the pictures of it are astounding because he emerges from this hole.

I mean, he looks terrible.

His hair is a mess.

He's got this long, straggly beard.

He looks like a man who's been hiding in a spider hole for six months.